


The Skywalker Fix-It Shop

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Background Owen/Beru, Background Relationships, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, May the 4th Treat, Pre-Star Wars: Attack of the Clones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-19 18:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10645347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: Beru helps Shmi make a repair.





	The Skywalker Fix-It Shop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anaraine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anaraine/gifts).



> I started this for you during Chocolate Box and was delighted to find out you requested it here as well! Happy May the Fourth!

The northwest vaporator was down again. Beru watched the light flicker from green to red in the control room. She liked it in here. The room was kept cool for the sake of the systems, and the overhead lights gave her more than enough illumination for reading or sewing. She'd just finished a seam on the new trousers she'd cut from that bolt she'd bought in Anchorhead. With a sigh, she set them aside. She intended to have new clothes made for them both before the wedding. At this rate, they'd be married at forty.

"I'll take a look," she said over the house comm. Owen and his father were busy in the guts of their landspeeder again. If Beru would like a ride home later tonight, she'd best leave them to fixing it. Her other choices were walking home in the cold night, or staying over.

As she grabbed the tools and and her sunhat, she mused that she wouldn't mind staying over. Her parents frowned at all the time she spent at the Lars homestead. Rumors, they chided her. Nice girls returned home before dark, safe from boys and Sandpeople both. Other parents might worry their daughter would attend her own wedding with a baby bump, and take her turn as the community's favorite subject for gossip. Her parents worried the lack of a bump would lead to even more cruel speculation. When all you had was nothing, appearances were all you had left.

Despite her parents' concerns, Beru spent more time here than she did at her own home. She and Owen had already decided they'd live here with his parents.

Parent.

A figure stood beside the vaporator as Beru approached. She hesitated. Then she joined Cliegg's wife at the open panel. "Do you see the problem?"

Mrs. Lars didn't answer. Beru always felt awkward when she was alone with Owen's stepmother. The woman had been a slave most of her life. Somewhere out in the galaxy, she had a son she often spoke of in wistful tones, while she never, ever mentioned his father. Her Anakin had been freed, but Shmi Skywalker had lived on in her slavery until Owen's father bought her. The rumors had a field day with that, and didn't stop when Cliegg emancipated her the next day, or when he married her soon after. Beru liked Owen's father. Mrs. Lars appeared genuinely content with him. But there were questions Beru could never bear asking her, and there were reasons her own family was wary of the Lars men.

Life on Tatooine was hard. The woman standing next to her had lived an even harder life than usual. Beru found words difficult around her. They wanted to start with "I'm so sorry" and gurgle into a deep well of pity. Pity would be the one thing her future mother-in-law would find unforgivable.

"It's the condenser," Mrs. Lars said after a long time, her voice muffled by the casing.

Beru cursed under her breath. The condensers on these things were by far the most expensive parts. The mechanics sold refurbished condensers for half the price of new, and they lasted half as long. Most farmers around here couldn't afford new, and made due with replacement after replacement until the condensers were more patch than part.

Mrs. Lars had brought her own bag of tools. She reached for a spanner without looking, grasping the handle and leaning further into the casing. In minutes, she'd unbolted it and removed the coil. "Will you please reconnect the ends?" she asked, the first she'd spoken directly to Beru since she'd stood there. "That will prevent more moisture loss."

Prevent? They'd just lost the whole vaporator. Beru chose not to argue, She took Mrs. Lars's place at the opening, reaching in with nimble hands to find the ends of the attachments. There was a gap, which she quickly bridged with a hose from her bag. It would do.

She turned and saw Mrs. Lars sitting neat as you please on the hard ground, the condenser in front of her on a cloth. Beru closed the panel. "If they have the landspeeder back together, we can get to Anchorhead and back before sundown. They might have one for sale."

Mrs. Lars didn't respond. Her eyes were intent on the coil. Her bag lay open beside her, and her fingers walked through the tools, selecting a thin rod Beru had never seen. Curious, Beru hitched her robe to a more comfortable position before she joined the other woman on the ground. Mrs. Lars twitched the tool inside a seam of the coil Beru barely saw, and with a twist, she popped it open.

"It's the grit," she said in a voice much like the settlement's teachers, from back when Beru was in school. "Sand gets everywhere, even through the smallest crack. Enough gets in, the part wears past the lubrication, and the next thing you know, it's frozen in place." She gestured, letting Beru see into the coil, where a deceptively few grains of sand had gathered.

Beru shrugged. "Everything gets sand-choked." Machines, people, even the stars were often blotted out by the sandstorms.

"Sand washes," said Mrs. Lars. She pulled out a compressor from her bag, no bigger than her hand, and carefully blew out all the specks. "Can you get me the rasp?"

Beru dug through the bag and pulled out a rough-grained rasp. Mrs. Lars took it from her and, with a circular motion, rubbed out the scrapes on the inside wall until it was smooth again. With a clean cloth, she wiped it down with oil, then wiped everything clean again. The inside looked brand new. Using her thin tool, she rejoined the sides.

She got to her feet. "We'll have to refill the coolant. I've got a small bottle with me."

"I brought another," said Beru. She'd hoped the unit just needed a top-off. She handed Mrs. Lars her bottle, and the woman accepted with a grateful nod. "How did you know how to repair it?"

"I've seen this before. It's not a difficult fix, as you noticed."

"Can you show me how to do that?" Beru had the skills to make a home. She wanted to help around the rest of the farm, too.

"Of course." They closed the panel one final time. Mrs. Lars cleared off the case to discourage the sand building up already.

As they walked back towards the house together, Mrs. Lars said, perhaps more to herself than to Beru, "That's the problem with people here. They're too quick to decide something is broken, when in reality, it's just worn. A bit of cleaning to remove the grime, a bit of patience to repair the damage, and you can find something valuable and worthwhile where others only saw trash."

She looked at Mrs. Lars now, really looked at her. Beru had long noted the lines on her face, and the old sorrows in her eyes, and Beru had assumed the worst about her past based on what she'd shared. Yet she had easily fixed a part that only the best mechanics could do a half-repair on. She worked on the homestead with as much commitment as someone born to the farm rather than someone compelled to stay by misplaced gratitude. She'd lost her child, but her voice held a loving pride whenever she spoke of her boy who'd gone off to be a Jedi. She wasn't broken. She was mended with fine stitching and patient work of her own.

"I'd be honored if you could teach me how to fix things as well as you do, Mrs. Lars."

"I'd be happy to show you. But please, I'd prefer you use my name. You'll be Mrs. Lars soon enough, and that will be confusing for everyone."

Beru smiled. "That it will." Shmi smiled back at her.


End file.
